Unfit to take their place in the battle line to meet the Imperial German Navy in an expected climatic and decisive clash, the forty pre-dreadnoughts were however to play very useful roles in secondary theatres, often in shore-bombardment roles. Only the eight King Edward VIIs were to serve, though only briefly, with the Grand Fleet, which from early 1915 onwards was composed solely of dreadnoughts and super-dreadnoughts. Obsolete Britain’s pre-dreadnoughts might be, but at the outbreak of war in 1914 a total of some forty were still in service, all less than twenty years old and many only ten.

white upperworks and turrets, ochre funnels and masts. The classic image of the Royal Navy pre-dreadnought at the turn of the century – still in Victorian livery of black hull. Crews in all cases were of the order of 800 men.

Two exceptions were HMS Swiftsure and HMS Triumph, originally ordered by Chile but purchased by the Royal Navy, with 10-inch main weapons and 7.5-inch secondary. In Britain’s last pre-dreadnought classes, the King Edward VIIs and the Lord Nelsons the secondary armament was increased to 9.2-inch guns. Main armament as four 12-inch guns, with some dozen 6-inch weapons as secondary armament, mounted in most cases in casemates. Powered by triple expansion engines of 12 to 18,000 horsepower, top speeds were in the range of 17.5 to 20 knots. In the Royal Navy, pre-dreadnought designs had been all but standardised since the mid- 1890s – vessels of typically 15,000 tons and 400 to 450 feet in length. The launch of HMS Dreadnought in 1905 made all other battleships afloat into “Pre-Dreadnoughts” overnight, incapable of fighting in the battle line with the new “all big-gun” battleship and her successors. The Royal Navy’s Pre-Dreadnoughts’ Sacrifice

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